Britain’s ‘staggeringly inefficient’ grid is pushing up bills, warns energy boss.

One of Britain’s biggest wind farms was handed £65m to slash its output by nearly three quarters last year, amid warnings that the country’s “staggeringly inefficient” power grid is pushing up household bills.

The Seagreen offshore wind farm in the North Sea – the largest of its kind in Scotland – had its output curtailed for 71pc of the time it was due to operate in 2024, grid data show. The Telegraph has the story.

This meant that of 4.7 terawatt hours of power its turbines generated, 3.3 terawatt hours were effectively discarded – with owner SSE paid by grid operators each time this happened.

SSE also owns the Viking wind farm in the Shetlands, which had 57pc of its output curtailed last year at a cost of £10m. It was only switched on in August.

The two sites have been paid another £1.5m so far this year for cutting output.

Grid operators pay wind farms to switch off when they are generating but there is not enough network capacity to transport their power.

But these curtailment payments ultimately go on to bills, in the form of network charges, and are paid by millions of households and businesses.

Last year, separate analysis by the Renewable Energy Foundation charity found that wind farms were paid almost £400m to turn off their turbines.

On Friday, SSE said grid upgrades were coming that would result in “more and more of this power flowing into the economy, powering homes and businesses for decades to come”.

A spokesman said: “Seagreen and Viking wind farms are incredible assets that give Britain the ability to harness huge volumes of its own clean, homegrown energy that can drive economic growth while reducing reliance on volatile imports.”

It came as the Government on Friday announced a slew of changes designed to attract more wind farm investment in the UK.

The proposals will make it easier for developers to secure contracts for difference (CfDs), the main mechanism used to support renewable energy schemes, and will extend their duration beyond the current 15 years.

But the figures will fuel a row that is raging in the energy industry over controversial proposals to introduce regional electricity pricing in the UK, replacing the current national price system.

Greg Jackson, the chief executive of Octopus Energy, compared the existing arrangement to “every region being forced to charge London house prices” and warned it would add £5bn to bills by the end of this decade.

Writing for The Telegraph, he said: “Britain suffers from a staggeringly inefficient market, reminiscent of the wine lakes and butter mountains of the old European Common Agricultural Policy.

Read the full story here.